


Things left behind

by Dissenter



Category: Katekyou Hitman Reborn!, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Family Drama, Family Issues, Fluff and Angst, Long Lost/Secret Relatives, POV Outsider, Secrets
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-30
Updated: 2017-07-30
Packaged: 2018-12-09 02:41:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,872
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11659926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dissenter/pseuds/Dissenter
Summary: Hayato's mother isn't as dead as he thought. Natasha has a child that no-one knows about.





	Things left behind

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know why I wrote this, it's a pretty random crossover. But it seemed a shame not to publish, once it was done.

The first time she saw her son’s face she was Lavinia and she was a pianist, at least, that’s what she told everyone. It was true to a point, but it wasn’t the truth, not even close. She told herself that wasn’t important, that motherhood was the only truth she needed. A truth she had never thought could be hers no matter how much she’d wanted it. Finding out she was pregnant had been unexpected, and inconvenient, and likely to get her killed. It was the best day of her life. She looked into her newborn baby’s eyes and the whole world had shifted. Love is for children and this child was _hers._ He was tiny and helpless, with white hair and green eyes and an innocent smile. He was nothing like her. Good, she thought to herself savagely, one less thing to bind him to the nightmares of her past.

She loved him, more than she has ever loved anything. But nothing she loves is hers to keep. Lavinia knew this. The men in grey in the rooms painted red taught her that well enough. His father took him, and Lavinia told herself it was for the best. He was safer with his criminal father than his assassin mother. Criminals have been having children for years, they know how to keep them safe. Lavinia has never been able to keep anyone safe, least of all herself.

Truthfully, she should have left sooner. She shouldn’t have visited him. He would have been safer that way. But when the boy’s father offered her visitation rights, offered to let her see him, she couldn’t say no. So she stayed, watched him grow from tiny helpless newborn to wide eyed toddler. He was brilliant, that much was clear early on, he was brilliant, and beautiful, gifted. She could think of a thousand different ways she could teach him to kill with those gifts. She taught him to play the piano instead. She didn’t want him to be her.

She smiled at him and taught him to play piano, and she could barely believe something so innocent came from her. It wasn’t hard to lie, to pretend she was not his mother, not when she saw so little of herself in him. In the end she thought, he might be the one good thing she ever created.

She stayed, maybe longer than she should have, but her past would always catch up with her eventually. She could sense the wolves starting to circle, and she knew it was time to cut and run before she dragged her bloody history into the life of her son. So she faked her own death, car accident, it’s a cliché because it works. She faked her own death and changed her name and ran. She didn’t look back. She ran and buried even the memory of the child she bore but did not name. She didn’t keep track of him, she didn’t speak of him, she kept no photographs, or strands of baby hair. She left him behind and pretended he never existed. It was the only protection she knew how to give him.

She never forgot.

_10 years later_

She was Natalia and she was back to the running and killing and loneliness that have defined most of her life. She danced with death every day and she knew it was only a matter of time before someone fired the bullet with her name on it. She knew her days were numbered, and she wasn’t even sure she cared. Until the man who carried that bullet that should have killed her, made a different call and suddenly the whole world changed.

His name was Clint Barton and he chose to spare her life. He owed her nothing, and needed her for nothing, and had no reason to trust her, but he held that bullet, had her right in his sights and he chose to save her instead. To give her a chance at something other than running and hiding and killing. Not atonement, but maybe balancing the books. Thanks to him she had a home that belonged to her and not a cover identity, and a semi legal job with actual employee rights, and _friends._ It was a kind of security she’d never had in her life and for that alone she will owe him forever.

She stopped running and for the first time in years she allowed herself to think of her son, to wonder what he might be doing. She could check up on him now. Many of her fellow agents had family, she suspected that Clint did, although she would never ask. But fear stayed her hand. Her life was safer than it had been but it was still not safe, and a lifetime of paranoia doesn’t loose its hold so easily. She didn’t look for him, she couldn’t bring herself to risk it. It would be the worst kind of selfishness to drag her troubles to his door after ten years apart. So she held her tongue and hoped he was safe, that he was happy.

_15 years later_

Now she was Natasha, at least to her friends. Her world had been turned upside down more times than she can count, but this time was different. This time everyone’s world changed. The world became a place of superheroes and aliens, and light that burned away the shadows she was born into. And somehow she was a part of it. Somehow she had a place in that light, a hero, not just a spy or assassin. It was overwhelming, disorienting, and yet it came with a kind of hope. She had protected the world, had told the truth and made the world safer because of it, and for the first time in her life she wasn’t hiding.

Maybe that’s why she found herself thinking of him again. He’d be an adult now, or near enough. She wondered where he was, how he was, who he was. She wanted to know, and for the first time since she left him she seriously considered trying to find out. Fear and caution caught at her heart again as they always do but this time was different. Now she knew, from the truth of Hydra in Shield, that fear and secrecy could be a poison, that the truth had a power all its own. Now she was learning that trust can be as much a protection as a weakness, and she _wanted_ to see him again.

She didn’t know where to begin so she went to Tony Stark. He had the best resources and… more than that she trusted him with this. Stark might be an irresponsible, unbalanced menace, but she knew bone deep that he wouldn’t use this secret against her. It wasn’t in his nature, he didn’t see people like that, as leverage to use against their loved ones. She trusted Clint and Coulson with her life and soul, but they were spies and assassins just as she was and she knew that part of them couldn’t help but think of people that way. She trusted them with herself, but not with this, not quite. So she went to Stark, who was innocent in so many ways, despite the sins he carried.

He started when she spoke, too immersed in his work to hear her coming. Natasha will never admit how much amusement she derives from sneaking up on him.

“I have a favour to ask.” She said, with quiet seriousness, and Stark turned to face her and asked

“What do you need?” without hesitation or uncertainty. In that moment she was glad she turned to him.

“I want you to find my son.” The shock on Stark’s face was a picture she was too nervous to enjoy, but she was sure Jarvis would have recordings she could appreciate later.

“I didn’t know you had a son.” He replied carefully.

“No-one knows I have a son. I haven’t seen him, I haven’t contacted him, he doesn’t know who I am. I have taken great pains to ensure that there is no way for anyone to connect the two of us, and I’ve prayed that it would be enough to keep him safe.” Her voice was a study in neutrality. She could tell Stark wasn’t buying it.

“And the father?”

“Had full custody when I faked my own death. I assume that hasn’t changed. He didn’t know who I really was.”

“So after what I’m assuming is years of silence and secrecy, you’ve finally decided to try and track him down again. Why now?” There was an edge to Stark’s words and Natasha was reminded that he had his own issues with parental abandonment.

“Recent events have… changed my views on certain things. Yes secrets can mean safety, but they can also be slow poison. I’m more free of my past now than I’ve ever been, and I miss him. I want to see him again, even if it’s just from a distance. I want to know how he is.” There was a vulnerability in her voice she couldn’t quite surpress. Stark looked at her with a kind of quiet evaluation before nodding.

“Ok I’ll see what I can do. What can you tell me about him? Name, age, looks, I’ll need something to go on if I’m going to find anything.”

“Hayato. His name is Hayato, and he’d be seventeen.”

…

It took Stark over a week to find anything. It wasn’t surprising. There wasn’t all that much to go on. Just a name, an age, and a basic description, and as it turned out he’d changed the last name years ago. That fact alone had made tracing him hard, add to that the fact that he hadn’t been in his father’s custody since age eight and it had been very difficult to track him. In fact from that point he seemed to have entirely vanished from all government systems in any country until he reappeared registered as a student in a Japanese middle school of all things. It wasn’t exactly a good sign, Natasha would lay good odds that he was involved in _something_ strange. Especially considering his file after that was also suspiciously thin, people with that little data available on line were either technophobic hermits, or hiding something.

He was alive though, and a tension that Natasha didn’t know she was carrying eased at the knowledge. Whatever else may have happened her son was alive.

“Are you going to go and see him?” Stark asked, and she found she didn’t know the answer. Did she want to see him? Should she see him? Would he even want to see her? It’d been years since they saw each other. Would he even remember her, know who she was? She never told him she was his mother. Stark listened to her half panicked doubts and there was something wonderfully neutral in his responses. The two of them weren’t close, not the way she is with Clint, or he is with Bruce. That helped, made the conversation less personal, meant the conversation involved less of the baggage and prior assumptions that old friendships come with.

He listened quietly to her fears, and doubts, and reasonable caution, before giving his opinion.

“I think this has been eating away at your insides for a very long time. Go and see him, whether it ends well or badly, at least you won’t always be wondering. Not knowing can tear a person apart.” Natasha hated it when Stark was the voice of reason. It felt like the natural order of the world had been upset. That didn’t change the fact that he was right though. If she didn’t go to see her son she would regret it forever.

…

Natasha flipped through the file again, a nervous reaction more than anything else, she’d already memorised the contents. Really she should have burned it after but… there were pictures of her son in there, and she wasn’t quite ready to give them up.

She still hadn’t decided whether to actually make contact, or just observe from a distance. She probably wouldn’t decide until she’d had a chance to figure out who her son had grown up to be. That’s why she was sitting in a sushi restaurant that Stark had tagged as one of the places he and his friends tended to frequent. Natasha didn’t know whether to be impressed or disturbed by Tony’s information gathering abilities. She was fairly sure he’d heavily abused both satalite imaging and credit card records to get most of the information he had. Given that more direct information had been so thin on the ground, she couldn’t really complain. Aside from his school records, it made up most of the information Tony had been able to find on him. Still, she shuddered to think what else he could find out if he really put his mind to it.

The sushi really was quite good, but the way the chef moved had all Natasha’s instincts on edge. If that man wasn’t an assassin she’d eat Steve Rogers’ obnoxiously patriotic uniform. From the too casual glances he was sending her way, he had her pegged as well. She wasn’t sure if he was just good enough to _know_ by looking, or if he recognised her from her recent exploits in the public eye, maybe it was both. Either way there was nothing to be gained by antagonising him so she carefully, obviously assessed him, leaving her body language open and her hands in full view. He raised an eyebrow. She shrugged and looked meaningfully at her sushi. Hopefully that should convey she was just there for something to eat, not to cause trouble of any sort. He seemed to get the message, because he relaxed slightly and returned to his work, although he still kept her in full view. It was so nice dealing with other professionals.

Her son walked in with two other boys, and had she been a civilian she might have taken them for an ordinary group of teenaged friends. But she wasn’t a civilian, never had been, and she could see the slight tension in the way they stood, the constant awareness of their surroundings, even as they bickered with each other, the way her son and the dark haired boy flanked the smaller boy as though to shield him from attack. Her son scanned the restaurant with hard green eyes, there was little of the innocent three year old she’d last seen in that gaze. Whatever her son had once been, he was an innocent no longer. She thought that maybe she shouldn’t find that as much of a relief as she did.

The sushi chef gave her a hard look when he noticed her scrutiny of the boys. On second glance one of the other boys did bear a striking resemblance to him. His son perhaps, no wonder he was concerned at her interest. She decided to leave before he intervened. No sense antagonising the father of one of her son’s friends.

…

Her son has a killer’s eyes, hard, and wary, and cold as steel. It turns out he is her child after all. He looked at her with caution, with suspicion, with careful curiosity. She could tell he didn’t remember her face, she hadn’t really expected him too, he had been so very young when she left, and it wasn’t as though she’d seen him more than a handful of times even before that.

She had evidence with her of course. Hayato moved like a half feral animal, and she knew better than to expect him to take anything on trust. She knew she wouldn’t, and he is after all her son. She laid it out like a mission report, this is what happened, this is how, this is why, this is who was involved. He was professional about it, something in her presentation bringing out formal formulaeic responses, rather than the more personal meltdown she could see lurking behind his eyes. He interrupted a couple of times to make calls, verifying the authenticity of her evidence no doubt. But otherwise he was silent, and if she had been any less skilled at reading people she would have missed the turmoil she was causing him.

She finished speaking and waited patiently for him to respond. She could see him rearranging his world view as she watched, half formed emotions flashing behind his eyes too fast for even her to read. As she waited she observed, trying to see what kind of man her son had become. A killer of course, his eyes alone told her that. He smelled of fire and gunpowder and his hands were covered in small burn scars, which marked him as an explosives expert, she remembered guiding those hands over piano keys when they were small and unmarred.

When he finally spoke she could tell he was struggling to control his voice.

“You’re not dead.” He said.

“No.” She answered softly. Their eyes met for a moment before he looked away.

“I need to think.” He got up to leave. “Give me your number. I’ll call you when I’m ready.”

**Author's Note:**

> There will be one more chapter from Hayato's POV.


End file.
